the future of DIGITAL EDITING

The Future of Digital Editing

With the drastic advancements in technology within the past decade, we continue to see improvements in its development and evolution towards futuristic views that we could once only strive to imagine. The tendency of technology now and likely in the future is dematerialization. We are seeing products like televisions and computer monitors shrinking down in size, and finding ways to maximize uses of devices such as the iPhone or Blackberry’s. I envision for the future with all this dematerialization is that we will soon see many things become obsolete in the world around us.

What I propose for my future technology in digital editing is what I would call the Holographic Synthesizer/Synchronizer – or ‘Holosyn’ for short. The Holosyn is a universal handheld device that people will carry with them everywhere, allowing the owner to approach any holographic technology and digitally edits it to their saved customized preferences. This may be in public locations, a friend’s house, or even at school. All that is required is for the holographic technology to be available and supported. What I mean by ‘holographic technology’ is a room that is composed of holographic projectors which are interconnected throughout the walls, and allows residents or owners to fully customize how they would like to decorate and express themselves.

Remember the times when you were a child and loved to draw pictures on just about anything? Well, children will be able to express their creativity by virtually drawing on their walls without it being permanent. Parents can edit the color of their walls just by opening a color palette on the wall and selecting the desired hue, or even adding a patterned texture. Physical picture frames will no longer be needed, seeing as owners will be able to customize their walls and place whichever pictures they want on the walls. Entrepreneurs would be able to load up all their presentation files just by using the Holosyn device and have a magnificent widescreen interactive view. Students will be able to become more involved with learning and education through the limitless capabilities of what a teacher would have at hand to teach the material. In addition, the students will have the luxury of being able to go on more field trips, experiencing the world first hand because of how portable a classroom will be. The Holosyn is what will keep all this data together, and unifies all holographic devices and technologies. It’s also equipped with all the capabilities of a cell phone, making it the ideal future handheld device.

The first major milestone that will contribute to the development of Holosyn would be for scientists to make the holographic technology affordable, and easy to install. Both of these need to be true in order for this idea to be implemented worldwide and to catch on. Once it’s available to the general public it will soon become recognized for its capabilities, paving the way for a unified system of communication – thus following along the trend of dematerialization. The main issue would then be installation, seeing as there needs to be a way for pre-existing houses to be able to utilize this new development. Once it has been installed though, all the walls would be fully customizable, and would act as a large personal computer allowing multiple users to be working on it at the same time. This would make purchasing multiple computers for each family member obsolete, and would not limit to where you would like to set up your workstation – providing more flexibility and space for other household essentials.

In addition, the use of holograms will redefine how digital editing will take place, introducing an entirely new suite of editing programs by adding an interactive 3D dimension to design. This would be the next step of designing, and a big step forward in terms of marketing and media. Models, cartoons, and movies will all be revamped. The new developments that will branch out from holograms will be the beginning of a new era in how arts and design will be created and perceived.

Next would be the growth of data storage, and its transfer. Let’s face it; people are not going to use something that takes ages to transfer. What we are beginning to see are increased file sizes in both pictures and video due to the demand for higher quality. This means that there needs to be a steady increase in storage for these sorts of media for them to equate the demanding increase. We are now seeing terabytes sold commercially, and in the future I suspect that hard-drives will consist of multiple terabytes in order to satisfy the consumer’s needs. With that said, the transfer speeds of data will likely increase in parallel to the larger capacity of data available.

A present day technology that is indicative of what may come in the future is the recent issuing of new identification cards such as passports or drivers licenses. In the United States and certain parts of the world, they are now embedding a new microchip called the ‘radio frequency identification’ chips, or RFID chips for short. These RFID chips allow for quicker purchases or identification through emitting radio waves. “Now cellphone makers like Finland’s Nokia Corp. are building the chips into their phones. That could transform the cellphone into a universal payment device that could supplant the credit card altogether.” (Bray, 2006, ¶ 3). This relates to the Holosyn through the aspiring need to unify and dematerialize for convenience. It renders the carrying of multiple cards or devices useless, combining them all into an all-in-one device.

USB mass storage devices have become an everyday essential to business people and students alike. They are a dependable way of universally transporting files and data without the need of internet access. Any computer with a USB port will be able to read, use, and extract data from them. The latest version is USB 3.0 (released in August 2008), which will operate at a ‘SuperSpeed’ rate of 5.0 Gbit/s (625 MB/s). The continual increase in data rates are an integral detail for the increases in capacities of data. As mentioned before, these two go hand-in-hand and complement each other.

Some past information I have drawn upon in the development of my imagined technology have come from other media shared to me by friends. ‘World Builder’, a short-film by filmmaker Bruce Branit is about a man who uses holographic tools to build a world for a loved one. From this short-film, I came up with the idea of using holographic technology for editing and model building. I then thought about how I would like to broaden the target user group of my futuristic technology. After recently finishing a project for an interactive arts course (IAT 102), I recalled how we were to design interactive posters where users can place a RFID handheld device on a location on the poster and download more information instantaneously. This was a neat idea, and I could see it having potential to become more wide-spread in the near future which is why I’ve decided to build off the idea and take it a step further. Then, what tied it all together was a video of future technological innovations to be expected by the year 2010 from Microsoft which I came across while researching. Many of these innovations to come are all very exciting to see, and I cannot wait to see how society will adapt to all these upcoming changes.

Reference List

Bray, H. (2006, August 14). Credit cards with radio tags speed purchases but track customers, too. The Boston Globe. Retrieved April 6, 2009, from http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2006/08/14/credit_cards_with_radio_tags_speed_purchases_but_track_customers_too/

Digital Native. (2009, March 4). Microsoft has developed digital innovations for 2020. Retrieved April 3, 2009, from http://www.sebastiencamusot.com/en/2009/03/04/microsoft-presente-les-innovations-digitales-developpees-pour-2020/

Radio-frequency identification. (2009, April 7). In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Retrieved April 6, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID

Universal serial bus. (2009, April 6). In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Retrieved April 6, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#USB_mass-storage